Dr. Atul R Thakare

This White Paper on MIHAN project was published in the International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering, Vol. 9 Issue 6(2), June 2019 At an exposition in Mumbai last week, while exchanging business cards, the old card was given to a delegate by mistake. The person enthusiastically enquired, if I was associated with MIHAN? I apologized him for the old business card and informed that I used to work as the Marketing Manager for MIHAN project previously. The person was a native of Vidarbha region, so he immediately asked about MIHAN ’ s progress and my experience at MADC, the company that executes the MIHAN project.  As an answer to his question, I could only say, ' MIHAN is still taking off because of the various business management challenges’. And rightly so, MIHAN is a classic case study of how ambitious government projects should not be managed. MIHAN is the project being executed by a special purpose vehicle (SPV-Company) named MADC (Maharashtra Airpo

The suicide of  VG Siddhartha , the founder of India's largest coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), caused turmoil in the country after the businessman’s body was found washed ashore in Karnataka's Netravati river, 36 hours after he went missing. Two days prior to his disappearance, the 60-year-old had left behind a note to his employees that revealed he was in deep debt.  "I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts. I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure...," his note read. The Income Tax Department acted as per law in its probe against Siddhartha after the letter accused tax authorities of harassment. All the businesspersons in the country are mourning over this tragedy whereas the experts are busy in analyzing the faults. However, I could relate the CCD Owner’s pl

Bekhayali me bhi tera hi khayal aaye, kyun bichhadna hai jaruri ye sawaal aaye... Teri najdikiyon ki khushi behisaab thi, hisse me faasale bhi tere bemisaal aaye. Tarun was trying to catch the beats of the woofer remembering the time spent with Sonu. He looked at Sonu’s photo on his cell phone while dousing the cigarette in his left hand, “She’s married now. It was a mutual decision”, he told himself, “But then why are her thoughts still troubling me…. why??” He screamed in the empty room full of smoke. Tarun was not able to accept that Sonu has gone far from him, after being (happily) married. All he was recollecting was the day when she met him for the last time, before her wedding, “I don’t want to get married, Tarun. I am not feeling happy with this marriage. I just can’t think of being happy with anyone but you.“ Sonu told with her eyes wet. “See Sonu, we have already agreed on that. I told you in the beginning itself that I cannot marry you, I am yet t

Last week, I met with a Founder of a California based start-up company who wanted to venture into a EV or Electric Vehicle domain. ‘EV, I think is going to be the next big disruption in India’, He said and asked for my opinion. Since I am working with a government company in the automotive domain, he expected a realistic perspective from my end. It was really difficult to answer his question in a YES or NO manner, at that moment, but I tried to compile my views on the subject. More automotive manufacturers are now devoting a rather large chunk of their resources towards the research and development of electric vehicles. The government is pretty much inclined to converting possibly all automobiles plying on Indian roads to electric vehicles. The goal to achieve this feat was earlier planned to make a reality by 2030. However, it doesn't seem feasible for the government now. At a maximum rate, they are now aiming for 30% Electric Vehicles on road by 2030 under  'Fas

(From the title, you must have got an idea about the subject. Of course, General Elections are around the corner and the subject that is over the internet is 'Indian Politics'. Having said that, I would like to understand what is that the common man or public is looking for in the General Elections 2019. In the title of this blog, Apna means Public ka . The tapori Munna in the evergreen movie Rangeela says ‘ Apun Public hai, apun kisiko kuchh bhi bol sakta hai. ’) In most of the competitive exams, we have Multiple Choice Questions with four choices. Sometimes we don’t know the answer, but we feel that the other three choices are wrong and so we eliminate them, and thus selecting the remaining option. In this upcoming General Election also, most of the voters opine that they don’t know who would be the right choice for the nation, but they know for sure that a few of them are not the right choice, so we are eliminating the options that we think are not suitable. The o